Never one to shy away from agitating old white guys in suits, the ever-outspoken M.I.A. just stepped on more corporate toes by dropping her remix of Beyoncé’s ‘***Flawless’ on Twitter overnight with the message, “Beyonce camp has not replied for months > SO HERE >”.
Queen B’s camp are probably kicking each other in the foot right now, because M.I.A.’s reworking goes in hard, instantly cementing itself as one of the year’s most essential club anthems to date.
Maya keeps her finger held down on the trigger for the entire duration – spitting out her trademark, phonetically-frenzied rhymes and cheerleader battle shouts that echo the original’s feminist sentiments (“50/50, men and women”) while throwing in cheeky, M.I.A.-ified twists on Bey’s now infamous cultural catchphrases (“My surfbort bitches ride waves”, “I woke up like this/I went to bed like that”). It’s some of the rapper’s sharpest lyrical work in years – dizzying, intelligent and insanely catchy, which is a combination not many other pop artists can crack quite like M.I.A.
Meanwhile, the production is a full-blown aural assault, bearing no resemblance to ‘***Flawless’ instead opting to start afresh with a club-tailored banger. It fluctuates between a heavy, swinging ‘Backseat Freestyle’-esque beat in the verses before the drumclaps up their tempo to give way for the track’s wall-shaking, siren-blazing drop, all-in-all climaxing on itself about three times, completely gratifying throughout.
‘Baddygirl2’ is far too flawless to go down as a rejected remix.
Listen below, and make sure you stick around for the sample of Yoncé’s 2008 gem, ‘Diva’.
